The International Tomato Genome Sequencing Project was begun in 2004 by an international consortium including participants from Korea, China, the United Kingdom, India, the Netherlands, France, Japan, Spain, Italy and the United States. The initial approach was to sequence only the euchromatic sequence using a BAC-by-BAC approach, and in total more than 1,200 BACs have been sequenced. In 2009, a complementary whole-genome shotgun approach was initiated, which in conjunction with other data yielded high quality assemblies. The International Tomato Annotation Group (ITAG) annotates the genome builds generated by this combined sequencing approach.